American politics

Guns in America

Broken hearted

“WE were in the gym and heard loud bangs”, said a nine-year old boy after the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, where at least 26 were killed, including 20 children. The shooter, who was dressed in battle fatigues, was 20-year-old Adam Lanza, whose mother may have been a teacher at Sandy Hook. His mother was found dead at her home. Lanza was declared dead at the scene.

Before the school went on lockdown, children reportedly heard screams over the school’s intercom system. Around 9:40 this morning, not long after the start of the school day, police received word they were needed at the school. As part of a newly implemented security programme, emergency texts were sent to parents. Fighting tears, an ashen-faced and unusually emotional Barack Obama, in an address to the nation said, “Our hearts are broken today.”

And so they are. The stories of heroic teachers who protected their young charges by ushering them into bathrooms and closets are only just beginning to emerge. The images of the surviving children being led out of the school, visibly frightened or dazed, while holding hands are chilling. Parents reunited with their children at a nearby firehouse. Twenty sets of parents waited in vain.

Even in a country as accustomed to gun violence (and, increasingly, mass shootings) as America, the murder of 20 children in their elementary-school classroom is uniquely shocking. Earlier this week, a masked gunman killed two people at a shopping centre in Oregon. Over the summer, there were murderous gun rampages at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and at a cinema in Colorado. In September, a gunman killed five former colleagues at a manufacturing plant in Minnesota. That same month Mother Jones published a piece showing that of the 139 guns possessed by the shooters, more than 75% were obtained legally.

A tearful President Obama noted that the nation has “endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years” and said that meaningful action is needed to prevent any more from happening, “regardless of the politics”. Unfortunately, other gun-related incidents, such as the one which left Gaby Giffords, an Arizona congresswoman, severely injured and killed six others, did little to push politicians to fight for gun control.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, urged Mr Obama to send a gun bill to Congress. Because of gun violence, he said, “not even kindergarteners learning their A, B, Cs are safe”. Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, wondered what it will take for politicians to stand up and put sensible gun laws in place. Every three hours, said Ms Edelman, a child or teenager is killed by a gun.

America is not alone in suffering mass shootings. In 1996, a gun massacre in a Scottish school in Dunblane killed 16 children and one teacher. The political impact was significant. The next year the Firearms Amendment, which prohibited private ownership of cartridge handguns, was passed. Security in British schools quickly improved, too.

As it happens, halfway around the world, on the same day, a deranged man attacked primary-school students at a school in China’s Henan province. He had a knife. Twenty-two students were wounded. None died. Adam Lanza had a pair of handguns, and a .223 semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle, which looks like this.

Eleven days ago—since when two mass shootings have taken place, this one in Newtown and another earlier this week at a shopping mall in Oregon—the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) president, referring to yet another shooting, bemoaned the media “[seizing] on the back of this national tragedy to try to piggyback their anti-Second Amendment national agenda right on top of the back of the national tragedy and try to force it on Americans all over the country.” Mr LaPierre, like the NRA’s Twitter page, has been silent today.

"Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, says he wishes Dawn Hochsprung, the principal of the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was armed with an M-4 assault rifle when she confronted Adam Lanza, the shooter who killed 20 children.

“I wish to God she had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” Gohmert said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

Gohmert said the founding fathers wanted the public to be armed to resist government tyranny.

“It ensures against the tyranny of the government if they know that the biggest army is the American people, then you don’t have the tyranny that came from King George,” Gohmert said in reference to King George III, the king of England during the American Revolution.

3) If your government was tyrannising over you, a bunch of yahoos with small arms ain't going to achieve jack shit against the means of coercion at the disposal of a state.

4) The Zombie Apocalypse won't ever actually happen. Sorry.

5) You're not a frontier society. You're not all rugged individuals standing on your own two feet. You're not a city on a hill. You're not exceptional. Your state is just like any other modern state - you have a giant government, work in offices, regulate the shit out of things, have a namby pamby health and safety culture, and depend upon aircon and cars for comfort. You aren't all living in a John Wayne movie, and you aren't embodying the noble dream of freedom by having six-shooters.

Ergo your constitutional/historic reasons for allowing law-abiding citizens to possess (basically useless) weaponry is anachronistic. Like slavery - also a right of the Framers - it should consigned to the trash heap of history. Why? (a)Because outcomes would be better - fewer of you would get killed, and, (b) the principle you'd be contravening isn't worth a damn any more.

Unabelievable that in the face of such horrific tragedy, gun lovers are still out in full force blaming the media, the violent entertainment, the crazies, the lack of concealed weapon carrying citizens...how much more selfish and psychologically f*cked up can these gun-loving freaks get?
Enough is enough!! No more guns, period! No law abiding citizen of any civil society needs to own a gun. Give a 1 month grace period for people to turn in their guns voluntarily. From then on anyone found with a gun is automatically assumed to have criminal intent or is psychologically f*cked, all the more reason to take away their guns and get them to a shrink, ASAP. I'm sick of these psychologically f*cked up gun-loving freaks ruining it all for everyone, it's time to return the country to all ordinary, sane people who do not need or want to own guns.

If this were true, and gun control were really an issue about "responsibility," then, logically extending your point, it would make sense for the government to remove ALL restrictions imposed upon its citizens. If individuals are "responsible" enough to own semi-automatic assault weapons, why not also allow them to own grenades, bombs, or tanks, for example? In fact, if we are to believe this logic, an individual, so long as they are a U.S. citizen, should therefore even be allowed to own nuclear weaponry, should they have the means to obtain it.

Of course, this line of thinking is antiquated and ridiculously backward. Unlike you have indicated, proponents of gun control understand that, rather than "nobody," NOT EVERYBODY is responsible enough to own a gun. More crucially, the negative stake involved with just one irresponsible individual owning such weaponry are extremely high. In today's modern era, it is therefore inappropriate to allow for the free and unfettered access to firearms; quite simply put, the risks far outweigh any potential benefits.

Finally, perhaps the single smartest action that teachers at Sandy Hook performed during this crisis was merely locking their classrooms, and shepherding their students out of harms way. Had these teachers been armed, and tried to be heroic, they likely would have exposed their students to more risk of casualty from crossfire. It is better to avoid the confrontation altogether, so as to allow the trained professionals of our nation's police forces to do their job. The Sandy Hook school teachers' calm and composure during this chaotic situation is admirable, and they should be recognized for this.

DG Reid: "Charles Whitman could have used a muzzle loader and done the same thing".

After the first shooting from the tower’s observation deck, one hour before three officers finally managed to shoot Charles Whitman, several armed civilians had tried to shoot the murderer. The reason they failed was due to Whitman’s huge firepower from a caliber .30, lightweight, semi-automatic M1 carbine, for which he had purchased the very same morning four more magazines and six additional boxes of ammunition.

If Whitman wouldn’t have had access to an M1 assault-rifle, together with quickly changeable spare magazines and excessive boxes of ammunition, he would have been shoot before being able to snipe 13 people and wound 32! That’s a fact, DG Reid. There would have been some casualties - but certainly not not 45!

And this is why your ‘apologetic argument’, concerning assault weapons, is nothing but a cheap excuse.

To demonstrate how useless and ineffective allowing every US citizen to be armed to the teeth is in providing safety note :-
a. The alleged perpetrator of the murders killed his mother with a gun which apparently she purchased legally ; what good did the gun do her ?
b. Did any of the law enforcement officers who attended the scene of the crime fire any shots ?
c. Did anyone apart from the perpetrator of the crime fire even a single shot ?
Constitutional right ?

Yes, guys like you probably also “fall on the floor laughing” when they learn that one of their gun-freak buddies just mowed down another 20 children.

Fact is we don’t care what you guys call your shooting machines. We care about what they did and can do in the hands of a mentally derailed person.

In 1966, when the University of Texas massacre took place, the M1 carbine was good enough to serve our troops in Vietnam as the standard (assault) rifle and it had enough comparable firepower that nobody could disarm Whitman quickly enough to hamper the huge death toll. Only this is what concerns decent people; and only this counted in 1966 in Austin . . . and only this also counted in 2012 in Newtown.

Any privately held weapon which is potentially capable of spraying so many bullets that it becomes impossible for victims to overpower a mad-gone shooter without accepting a huge death toll themselves, is by nature and definition meant for a criminal 'assault'. Hence, it must fall under a renewed "Assault Weapon Ban". Period.

DG Reid: "The question can be asked that if the teachers had been armed, would there have been fewer deaths?"

To ask such a question in earnest is rather a sign of lunacy.

Teachers have usually neither the time nor the desire to spend weeks after weeks with assault-weapon-training on shooting ranges as those sociopathic gun freaks do. A normal American teacher would, in this case, have been shot first by an unswerving sociopath.

So, consequently, your next question must be: "Would there have been fewer deaths if the kindergarten kinders had been armed as well?"

The next puffery from the gun industry will then be "Yeah, arm 5-year olds with semi-automatic handguns to bring about 'fewer deaths' when their kindergartens are assaulted by a mad gun-freak.

There will be many more of these incidents. Precisely because of the logic used by gun advocates.

"You need to protect yourself."

That's what convinced a middle-aged woman living in a safe neighbourhood, in wealthy Connecticut, to acquire an arsenal, despite the fact that she was deeply concerned about her son's mental stability.

Her carelessness (no gun/trigger locks, or secured storage) cost America over two dozen lives including her own.

It's high time, they started making gun owners culpable for not properly securing their weapons. If you feel the need to protect yourself, fine. You are entitled to own a firearm. If it gets stolen and used because it was not stored properly, you should be prosecuted for manslaughter. No different than leaving your car keys on the table in front of a drunk.

Lately, here, in the United States, a number of prominent conservatives and lobbyists have sought to maintain that the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution was intended by the Founding Fathers to empower the average man to maintain a private cache of weapons, so as to preserve himself against the tyranny of the State !!

Amazing as such claptrap sounds, they insist that this is what their "2nd Amendment Right" consists of and, so, they abjure anything that might interfere with their private ownership of whatever weapon strikes their fancy.

I have to say that these people advocating this perverted interpretation of the US 2nd Amendment are certainly "fringe" elements of our society, that they have it entirely backwards, and that they are, themselves, the kind of dangerously psychopathic people who should and would fail any licensure test, if we had a proper licensure test, for the privilege of owning and operating firearms.

These people, like the former senate candidate, Sharon Engle, of Nevada, completely misunderstand the 2nd Amendment. That constitutional provision empowers the States, by and through the fact that their citizens may own firearms, to raise "militias" in defense of the States and of the Nation. But the 2nd Amendment does NOT empower private citizens to harbor weapons for the purpose of attacking the government at any level, nor for protecting themselves from having to submit to the enforcement of the law.

Those paranoid personalities and other psychopaths who believe otherwise shall surely go the way of Timothy McVeigh. But their vocal opposition is no reason at all to avoid repealing and replacing the 2nd Amendment with a public policy and a regime much more appropriate to the 21st century than the late 18th century.

I am both an American and a Brit; and having lived and worked in both countries, I don't for one second believe that there is a greater proportion of the US population that is psychotic or murderous than in the UK.

Therefore, how can we explain the wildly different murder rates? To me, the only rationale explanation is that Brits with the requisite intent don't have the opportunity afforded by widespread firearms ownership to act on these impulses that their American counterparts have.

I can think of no sensible rationale for civilians to hold semi-automatic rifles (not required for hunting or target shooting) or hand guns of any sort at all - and certainly not in homes. The level of training and practice for these to be effective "protection" should involve range work of several hours a week to provide the required accuracy and target discrimination.

If nothing else, perhaps this will lead to banning - and compulsory collection - of the most dangerous semi-automatic rifles and their large calibre single-short counterparts, along with a federal ban on the sale of their ammunition (5.56 and 12.7mm rifle ammunition). Add to this a requirement for every weapon to be licensed and ballistically tested, and kept in a locked cupboard with ammunition held separately and securely, then we may see a reduction in some of the tragic accidents that make up a large proportion of US firearms casualties.

Finally, we can impose taxes on ammunition to reflect the externalities that gunfire imposes on the rest of society. These will be very high, reducing the amount of ammunition in circulation.

And no, none of this would have an impact on my rights as an American under the 2nd Amendment.

To think of "wild west"-style shootouts between assaulting killers and attacked kindergarten classes (with guns in every American classroom) as a 'viable solution' is indeed quite 'abnormal', IMO.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the herald of such 'pearls of wisdom' must be abnormal or 'insane' as well! He could, e.g., simply be a paid advocate of the American gun lobby.

Otherwise, I'd say, it is quite 'perverse' for a normal thinking American to suggest - as a "quasi-solution" for life threatened school kids and their teachers - that they must assume the role of law enforcement officers in order to protect themselves against mad-gone gun freaks who feel 'protected' by the (perversely interpreted) "Second Amendment" of our Constitution.

Semi-automatics have been used in all 'mass shootings' (assaults with guns in the US that resulted in high civilian death tolls) since the insanity started with ex-marine Charles Whitman in 1966 in Texas.

Accordingly, semiautomatic rifles and handguns with extra-large magazines played a major role in ALL recent cases of mass assaults against civilians - assaults against innocent adults as well as against children. Fact is, aside from home-made bombs, ONLY the use of such firearms makes a mass killing of 10 … or 27 individuals possible by ONLY ONE madman!

A renewal of the suspended Federal Assault Weapons Ban (lifted 2004 during the George W. Bush administration) would therefore be a first step in the right direction!

A major flaw of the previous ban was that it didn’t punish the possession of such weapons and devises, and it didn’t include the sale of weapons manufactured before the date of enactment (which was September 13, 1994). This merely opened the doors to a booming second-hand market.

To be more effective, this time a renewed federal ban of 'assault' arms and devises must include the ‘possession’ as well … entirely independently from ‘when’ they were made.

Subsequently, convictions ‘for possession’ must carry a 5-years minimum sentence; meaning, when found guilty, no district judge has the power to sentence the defendant to less time than this minimum term.

If extensionally enforced, none of the recent mass killings would/could have taken place, since it would have sufficiently deterred socially or mentally disturbed people from obtaining such weapons too easily.

Those wishing to continue America's current gun ownership policy are always quoting the 2nd Amendment, "...the right of citizens to keep and bear arms", but they should consider what the first part of the 2nd Amendment. I think the Jeffersonian version is very clear
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", a sentiment understandable in a people who had just finished fighting a professional army to gain their independence and were somewhat chary of standing armies.
Jefferson's ideal seems to have been of citizen-soldiers who could turn out to defend their homes. However, the U.S. now has a large armed force that in firepower terms, probably outguns the rest of the world combined, so the role of a defensive militia is perhaps a little redundant.
However, it's modern equivalent, the state National Guard units exist, and form a valuable reserve to both the regular forces, and in times of natural disaster, where their training and discipline have shown their worth many times.
Accordingly, if anyone wants to learn how to use high powered weaponry safely for both themselves, and the wider community, they should join their local National Guard unit, and get to use pistols, rifles, grenades, machine guns, tanks and aircraft. And at the end of each training and exercise period, all the weaponry and ammunition is secured safely.
Automatic weaponry and handguns, neither of which have any sport hunting utility, should not be sold to civilians from now on. A buy back should be offered for any handed in, no questions asked, and any such weapons found in the course of law enforcement should be destroyed ASAP.

I think a lot of the gun control controversy boils down to what the economists call the 'fallacy of composition'. The idea is, what might make sense for an individual to do, doesn't work when everybody does it. A simple example is, you're in a crowd watching a parade. You can't see, so you stand on your tiptoes. That's fine as long as you're the only one doing it, but if everyone else around also stands tiptoe, then you and they are worse off because you can see no better than before, and to have to stand that way is uncomfortable and tiring. In the same way, it might make sense for an individual to own a gun (though even that is doubtful), but if everyone owns one, he and they are actually less safe, because a certain proportion of the population is irresponsible, impulsive, criminal or crazy. Even if that proportion is tiny, guns amplify their power of dealing death so much that it puts everyone at risk.